1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multifunction peripheral, a method for controlling the multifunction peripheral, and an image processing system including the multifunction peripheral.
2. Description of the Related Art
From the viewpoint of privacy protection, governmental or municipal agencies and other general offices/companies are recently required to strictly prevent any leakage of business secrets and personal information. In this respect, the exchange of information using electronic document data includes a higher risk of leaking information due to excellent mobility.
There is a system in which a security policy is issued by an application of a host computer (PC). According to this system, a user is allowed to request setting a security policy for each document data when the user creates the document data. The application, which generates or edits document data, sets the security policy based on instructions given by the user.
For example, the security policy may allow both a user A and a user B to view document data. However, the security policy may prohibit any other user but the user A from editing and printing the document data. In this manner, the security policy indicates the right of each user to access a document. The access right includes permission of each operation (e.g., view (display), editing, and printing) applied to a document. The security policy may include the term of validity being set for each document.
The policy information having been set is stored in a policy management server (policy server) so that every user can view the policy information by logging into the policy server. If the user B requests accessing document data to which a security policy is set, a PC application logs into the policy server and obtains policy information of the requested document data. The PC application confirms various restrictions (including function restrictions) being set for the user B by referring to the obtained policy information.
Then, the PC application determines permission/prohibition of each processing. For example, if the policy information indicates that the user B is prohibited from editing the document data, the PC application does not permit the user B to edit the document data. If the policy information indicates that the user B is prohibited from printing the document data, the PC application does not permit the user B to print the document data.
As discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-063008, there is a system in which a security policy is issued by a printing apparatus. According to this system, a policy server stores a list of users who are allowed to use the printing apparatus. If any user requests printing document data via a PC or other information terminal apparatus, this system restricts each user using the printing apparatus based on the user list obtained by logging into the policy server.
Furthermore, as discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-289302, if an information processing apparatus is a multifunction peripheral (MFP), the server can store a user list that describes permission with respect to a plurality of functions of the MFP. If any user requests one of the MFP functions, the system restricts each user in the use of every functions of the MFP based on the user list obtained from the server.
However, systems using the above-described policy server may not be available for all host computers. This issue should be addressed when establishing a highly secure system. More specifically, if a word processing application that can use the policy server is unavailable for an apparatus, this apparatus cannot control access to any document based on policy. For example, when the MFP (i.e., an apparatus other than a host computer) scans a document and registers scanned image data to a box (which is referred to as “Scan to Box” function), the MFP cannot set a security policy for the scanned image data.